Accounting for the quality of opponents and RPI’s play level, I think this past weekend was pound-for-pound their best of the year. These two home games were a culmination of a lot of progress this season from a group of 20 new faces. The Engineers have beaten a few inferior opponents and had close calls against top teams, but they haven’t put it all together in the league. They have struggled to score all year but are extremely well coached and difficult to play against. RPI took #9 Cornell right to the brink Friday night and thoroughly outplayed Colgate on Saturday. Let’s take a look at what went right:
Friday: 1-1 Tie vs #9 Cornell
Cornell is just tough. They are one of those programs in college hockey that has an identity year-in and year-out, recruiting physical players that are hard to play against. When RPI has been down the past 5 years, these Cornell teams would repeatedly “out-system” RPI and completely prevent scoring chances. Friday night, I thought RPI gave them a taste of their own medicine and threw their game right back at them. Cornell won the underlying’s battle, and one could argue that Bruno Bruveris kept them in the game too, but the two teams played very close to even all night.
RPI got on the board first once again on a 2nd period goal from Mathieu Bourgault. I couldn’t tell if Bourgault got a tip on Jimmy Goffredo’s shot or if it merely hit him and went in, but nonetheless it drew first blood. Aiden Long tied it halfway through the 3rd for Cornell and that would be all the scoring in this one. RPI had the puck for most of overtime but failed to muster too many quality chances before eventually falling in the 4th shootout round. It goes down as a tie for their overall record, which is surprisingly their first of the year.
Saturday: 6-1 Win vs. Colgate
Colgate on the other hand is down this year, let’s not bury the lede. Mike Harder hit the ground running at Colgate, posting back-to-back 3rd place finishes in the league. They sit in 7th in the ECAC now and struggled out of conference, but they are still a more talented team than RPI is this year. On this night though, none of that mattered. RPI took it to them for 60 consecutive minutes, this one was truly never close. 3 assists for Filip Sitar, and a goal and assist for Matthew Buckley, Tyler Wallace, Ian Scherzer and Alfred Lindberg all led the way.
Outside of the SLU game last weekend, RPI has gotten better and better goaltending as the year has gone on. Nate Krawchuk has certainly made his case in year 1 to get a lot of work in net going forward.
Playoff Implications
If the season ended today, RPI would go to Colgate for a single game set in the ECAC playoffs. They sit just 4 points out of 8th, but also 3 points from last, so this is a highly contested race. Realistically, RPI is most likely to finish between 8th and 12th right now with Colgate having 8 points on them.
Dartmouth and Harvard figure to be tough games at home this weekend, but RPI finishes at Yale and Brown which will have major implications. Since Clarkson, SLU, Brown, and Yale play each other this weekend, RPI probably needs to get one win against Harvard and Dartmouth to stay in the race with these teams.
It’s hard not to like the compete level of this team late in the season. They play extremely hard, are one of the least penalized teams in the country and have a goaltender starting to play very well. Lang said he wants his team playing their best hockey of the year in February and March, and they seem to be doing just that. Let’s all stay behind this team into the stretch run as they look to build upon this big weekend. With the last home games of the year and Freakout! night on tap, this weekend figures to be a good one. Let’s go red!